The Clay Lion (2 page)

The
government was eventually forced to step in, as generations of people were in
danger of having their lives, and more dangerously, other people’s lives,
irreparably destroyed.  The problems of time travel were well documented,
but there seemed to be a part of human nature that assumed that bad things only
happened to other people. 

When
the government became involved, politicians fought bitterly about the
crisis.  Split down party lines, there were those who believed that our
ability to time travel was just another evolution of our species that should be
allowed to play out accordingly.  Others believed that the practice should
be obliterated and never attempted by humankind again.  An agreement was
reached somewhere in the middle.

Beginning
with the third generation after the discovery, new laws were put into effect
limiting the number of traveling trips each individual could take in a
lifetime.  At birth, all citizens, along with their identification
tagging, were coded with one trip voucher.  The trip could be used at any
point during a lifetime after the age of 18, but was good for just one
trip.  The duration of the trip could not exceed six months.  Classes
were required with mandatory attendance three times a week for two months
before the trip.  In addition, the paperwork was extensive.  The
decision to time travel was taken quite seriously by most people. 

The
final hours before the voyage were filled with government propaganda that
attempted to convince travelers to change their minds.  The last papers to
be signed waived your rights to sue the government should something go
wrong.  They also informed you that there was always the possibility that
the past you were hoping to return to would not exist as it did when it was
first lived, having been changed by someone else’s voyage since that
time.  Finally, and most importantly, you were forced to certify that
every attempt would be made to ensure nothing was changed in your timeline
during the trip.

I
signed the final affidavit with my fingers crossed behind my back.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

My
brother and I shared a bond that was uniquely ours.  I do not know how my
parents fostered it
or
whether anything they did or
did not do ever had any effect on our relationship.  We led a secluded
childhood.  We had friends at school outside of one another, but at home,
it was just the two of us.  Our home was isolated from the neighborhoods
and subdivisions where other children would cross invisible property lines into
one another’s yards to play hide and seek and football.  Branson and I
were always just outside of most parents’ acceptable range of travel for a
child on a bike, and therefore we spent most of our time playing together, just
the two of us.

My
best friend in elementary school had a little brother the same age as Branson
whom she never spoke to, much less played with.  She could not understand
how I could stand to be around an annoying little brother.  I could not
understand how she could ignore such a fun kid.  Eventually our friendship
faded away.

I will
never forget the day my mother took Branson to the doctor the first time about
the cough.  Like all children, we had both dealt with our share of
infectious diseases.  We had weathered influenza, strep throat, and pink
eye… the usual suspects in the list of childhood illnesses.  We always
hated that our mother would separate us into our respective rooms in an attempt
to keep one from infecting the other.  It was rarely a successful
endeavor.  Whoever was quarantined in their room would set up a makeshift
bed by the door while the other would make a nest of games and toys in the
hallway just outside the infirmary.  We would play cards together by
calling out the card we were playing, taking the other at their word that the
card they were playing in the adjacent room was actually one that was
held.  We read books.  We told stories.  We laughed until our
mother would arrive in a whirlwind to clear up the hallway nest and insist upon
our separation once again.

It was
different with the cough.  Not long after it began, Branson started
commenting that the physical education class seemed to be getting more
difficult.  He was getting winded playing basketball and running,
activities at which he usually excelled.  When after a week, the dry
hacking cough was getting worse instead of better, Mother decided, against
Branson’s wishes, to take him to our family physician, Dr. White.  Having
exhausted every diagnostic tool in his arsenal, Dr. White sent him on to the
specialists.  My brother was tested for pneumonia and whooping
cough.  There was blood work.  There were x-rays.  Dozens of
doctors convinced themselves that, clearly, the next diagnosis would prove to
be the correct one. 

During
those months, Branson was brave.  He never complained.  His faith in
the scientific process never wavered.  He felt confident that his symptoms
would eventually be explained and that when they were, a successful treatment
would soon follow.  Then life would return to normal.

He was
right on only one of those counts.  Eventually, as his quality of life was
diminishing rapidly on a daily basis, a final and true diagnosis was
identified.  After a lung biopsy, which left my once strapping brother a
weak and eerie shell of his former self, the lung specialist declared that
Branson had
pulmonary
fibrosis. 

Some diagnoses produce a straightforward
response.  Not that they are necessarily easy to hear, but at least people
know how to respond. 
Cancer for example.
 
No one wants to receive that diagnosis, but at least everyone knows what it is,
everyone knows someone who has had it, and everyone is fairly familiar with the
course of action to treat it.  It is not always a death sentence and most
of the time, though it will be a battle, it will be a battle that can be won.

Branson’s diagnosis left us unable to
respond.  First, none of us had ever even heard of pulmonary fibrosis,
which is the progressive scarring of the lungs due to, in many cases, an
unknown environmental factor.  After being schooled on its definition, and
being already well versed in the disease’s symptoms, it was then time to
discuss Branson’s treatment and prognosis.

In a word, there was none.

We left the clinic silently, unable to make eye
contact with one another.  I pushed Branson in his wheelchair to the rented
van and waited as my father helped to hoist his weakened body into the bench
seat.  After securing the chair to the back of the van, I slid in next to
him. We were inches apart but worlds away.  In the few minutes since the
doctor had disclosed his revelation, my brother had quickly retreated into the
land of the dead.  His prognosis was certain.  He would surely
die.  I let my hand slide toward his and slowly, calmly, let my fingers
find their way between his.  His hand was warm and his muscles tensed at
my touch, but he did not pull away.  I slid closer and pulled his head
onto my shoulder.  And then my brother cried.  Big heavy sobs wracked
with coughing and the rattling of his chest.  My mother and father wept
quietly from the front of the van.  We sat together, the four of us, in a
rented conversion van in the parking lot of the city’s pulmonary clinic, crying
for the loss of the life we were about to lose and the lives that would surely
never be the same again.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

It took 3 months, 12 days, 5 hours and 37 minutes
from Branson’s diagnosis until his passing.  It took significantly longer
for me to travel far enough along through the stages of grief that I was able
to begin devising a plan to bring my brother back to us.

It began with a simple news story, not unlike any
other one that we would hear about several times a day.  It caught my
attention as I was idly scrolling through the television channels one night,
part of yet another day that I never got dressed or made any attempt to leave
the house.  The clip involved a doctor being praised for the courageous
use of his trip.  The doctor was convinced that he had made a mistake in
the diagnosis of one of his patients, who had later died.  He used his
trip to go back into his own life to change his treatment plan for the
patient.  The result was that, when he returned to the present day, he
discovered his patient alive and well.  They were both there, smiling on
the screen together, hugging and crying.  Of course, the police were
waiting on the sidelines to escort the doctor off to sentencing, as he clearly
violated one of the most important traveling laws.  But, laws
be
damned.  A life had been saved.

I stopped breathing.  I sat motionless,
staring at the screen.  The weather report began.  Still, I did not
move.

A man had used his trip to change the past in
order to save another person’s life.  It was not the first report of
someone having done it.  In fact, traveling changes happened frequently
enough that it was only a filler blurb in the newscast, not a top story. 
But for me, it was as if it was the first time I had ever heard of such a
thing.  In the foggy delirium that had become my life since Branson’s
death, many of my conscious thoughts were of our past.  But suddenly, like
the first large wave at the turning of the tide, I was awash with thoughts of
my future. 
A future with my brother.
 
A future that would require fixing the past.

I found my breath.  I took a huge intake of
air.  I do not know how long I had been holding my breath in the wake of
my new revelation.  I made a motion towards my bedroom.  Slowly at
first, and then I was running.  When I got to my room, I found my tablet
under piles of discarded clothing.  It had been abandoned months ago along
with my reason for living.  Of course, the battery was dead which sent me
into another flurry of activity in an attempt to retrieve my charger from
whatever depth it was hidden.

Once activated, I wasted no time scouring the
internet for information about the causes of pulmonary fibrosis.  I spent
hours reading layman articles.  The same information appeared repeatedly
and none of it was helpful.  There was a lot about possible environmental
contributors, infections, and exposure to radiation.  The list went on and
on.  After reading, “In some people, in fact in most cases, chronic
pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis develop without an identifiable cause,” for
what seemed to be the hundredth time, I threw the tablet across my room and it
landed with a thud on the floor.  I lifted my head for the first time in
hours, massaging my neck and realized the sun was peeking out from below the
horizon.  I had been awake all night.  My mother appeared at my door.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

It was such a loaded question.  I was not
okay and I doubted I would ever be okay again.  And yet, as the day
dawned, I was more okay than I had been in months.

When I did not answer she continued, “I heard a
crash.  I thought you might be hurt.”

Oh. 
The tablet.

“I’m fine Mom. 
Just
dropped my tablet.”

She crossed the threshold and sat on my
bed.  She reached out and ran her fingers through my hair, the way she did
when I was little.  For the longest time, she and I just sat there, she
stroking my hair, and I wondering if I had the courage to leave the house.

Finally, I found my voice.  “I am going to
head out into town to run some errands today. 
As long
as it’s okay with you.”
 

“It’s Thursday, Brooke.  Your dad and I need
both of our cars for work.  We sold your car.  Remember?  You told
us to get rid of it.”

I had forgotten about working and days of the
week and school and life outside the walls of the house.  Branson died in
July.  The day I should have moved into the freshmen dorm with the rest of
the students at State, I never got out of bed.  Somehow, my parents had
discovered a way to maintain. 
To carry on.
 
To go about their lives
which included work and friends and
each other.
 Somehow, I had not. 
Until that
morning.

“Then will you take me to the bus stop on your
way to work?” I asked.

She considered for a moment.  “You’re
leaving the house?”  There was genuine concern in her voice.  “Are
you sure you are up for it?”

No.  Yes.  No.  I did not
know.  But suddenly I had a purpose and I felt like perhaps the past six months
I had been resting. 
Resting for the journey ahead of
me.
  And now, at long last, I was ready to begin it.  With
that realization, I felt the need to move.

It was almost like learning to walk again. 
After so many months of doing
nothing
, and now having
something
to do, I did not know where to begin.  It slowly came back to me. 
The showering, the tooth brushing, the getting dressed.
 
I had to change my clothes after rushing outside in shorts and flip-flops only
to be greeted by a fresh coating of snow on the sidewalk.  I gathered my
tablet and a banana and waited for my mother in the car.